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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Twitter - Unfollow

One of the things Twitter interface currently doesn't do well is it's search functionality and managing an account's Followers and Following. Luckily they have allowed the public access to their API and programmers in turn have created all sorts of Twitter related applications.

Twitter Rules and Best Practices

Twitter has throttle down accounts to try to deal with people setting up accounts for spamming purposes. They did this by limiting the number of followers a user can have. When you first setup a Twitter account you are only allowed to Follow up to 2000 Twitter users. In order to increase this amount you must have 2000 Twitter followers. Once you’ve followed 2000 users, there are limits to the number of
additional users you can follow: this limit is different for every user
and is based on your ratio of Followers to Following. They also have other policies in place like regulating follow churn and aggressive following.

Why is important to manage your Following List?

Since Twitter has placed limits on Followers to Following, you need to be able to determine who isn't following you aka "Non Followers" from your Follower list. In the scheme of things, Non Followers don't help you get more Followers.

So what is a Twitter user to do? Well thankfully there are programs out there like JustUnFollow that help you organize your Following list. JustUnFollow organizes your Following list from most active to least active, allowing you to delete the ones that aren't helping you. The Free service allows you to Unfollow up to 50 users a day. The payed subscription, the lowest being $10 a year allows for unlimited follows/unfollows.